During Christmas vacation of 1974 several things happened:

* First Interstate said they would make no more short-term loans to the ODE. No one on the board knew short-term loans were being made.

* The Ode’s printer (the now-defunct Valley News) said it would not continue to print the ODE until the past charges were paid. No one knew they hadn’t been paid.

* When then-editor Drex Hiekes asked the general manager about this, the GM yelled he didn’t have to answer to a student and walked-out.

* Board Member Peter Dietz, a dean in the Business School, decided it all sounded a bit suspicious and ordered an audit.

We learned we were broke. Very broke.

Seems the GM was taking a short-term loan from the bank each month to pay salaries. He knew if he failed to make payroll, the gig would be up.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t paying much of anything else.

The then-family owned Springfield News stepped in and the Nelson family (OSU boosters, by the way) said they would print us, but they couldn’t spare the newsprint, which was in short supply. The Eugene Register-Guard volunteered to supply the newsprint.

So, come winter term, we were back in business–barely. During the next six months the board reorganized itself and began working with our creditors. In June, I became editor of a newspaper which many said would spend its last year in independence, and then return to the wing of the University.

What a year.

The former GM had invested ODE money in the purchase of a downtown building where he was to install a press. We had to extract ourselves from that.

He had purchased a small, but big money-losing, senior citizen weekly. We dumped it not once, but twice. After the first sale the owners defaulted so we had to repossess the thing. Then, with the help of Ron Wyden, who was then a senior advocate lawyer, we got government support for the publication and it became a non-profit publication. I believe it still publishes under the name Phoenix.

We hired a supposedly professional ad director and former University of Washington advertising professor who spent his days saying “that’s not how we did it at the Udub.” After a few months we bought out his contract and hired Carl Bryant, who was instrumental in making the ODE a profitable newspaper.

Not all wanted to see us survive. Though ASUO President Jim Bernau and Vice President Jim Davis were supportive of continued ODE independence, not all were. Several members of the Incidental Fees Committee thought if we failed, perhaps the student government could get control. Throughout the year they worked to find ways to cut our funding. Jim Bernau and Jim Davis struggled with us to keep the funding. We repaid Jim Davis by editorially supporting his opponent for 1976-77 ASUO president. I am friends with both Jim’s today and they have yet to forgive me for that.

There were those in the University community who were hoping for failure, but they were in the minority. School of Journalism Dan John Hulting put his reputation on the line for us.

Because of our financial situation we could no longer pay reporters as we had in the past. Students couldn’t get academic credit for working on the ODE because we were an independent newspaper.

Dean Hulting allowed ODE managing editor and me to teach an upper division newswriting class. The ODE news editor assigned the students weekly stories, which Dennis and I would grade. The news editor used the stories as he saw fit.

Speaking of fit, the journalism faculty had one. But the dean backed us, even when the faculty demanded the classes be monitored.

Meanwhile, our creditors approved a three-year repay plan. We didn’t need it. By the end of the school year, we repaid our debts in full and the ODE became profitable the following year.